The Gay Community should be disturbed by the media coverage of Trump/Putin
Thomas Prentice
Homosexuals need to be disturbed by the homophobic vitriol about the Putin/Trump summit vomited up by their friends: The “liberal” Democrats, late night comedians, and elite corporate media like the New York Times.
(Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
The Gay Community need to be disturbed by how fast and how easily “Liberal” Democrats and the corporate media descended into the Hell of Homophobia over the Helsinki summit between Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump.
While I have no regard for Trump and find him repugnant, vile, narcissistic and infantile, nevertheless peer at the repeated no-lube ease by which media celebrities and corporate news media organizations have, along with “Liberal” Democrats, slipped into TotalHomoHatred vitriol about the summit, Trump and Putin, and that the whole idea that good relations with the Russians are a good idea to try and stave off a nuclear war. (Anybody ever see the Stanley Kubrick film “Dr. Strangelove”?)
That celebrity favorite of the bourgeois liberal Democrats and elites everywhere from sea to shining sea in late night, the former Stephen Colbert, has remarkable dexterity in repeatedly coming up with ways to trash both Trump and Putin with Homophobic slurs.
To be completely fair, the former Colbert merely followed up on protest art depicting Trump and Putin as homosexual lovers of one kind or another – and in politically correct, “pro-gay” LIBERAL spaces.
But on the eve of the Helsinki Summit, the former Bill Maher even dipped deeper in the toxic waste dump of slag and slime of liberal Homophobia than even Colbert when Maher displayed a cut-and-paste image of Trump giving Putin a blow job in a boat on a lake with the merry Maher caption of “Lenin Party.”
But Lo! Also on the eve of Helsinki, the mighty New York Times – The New York Times ! — came up with a vile, repellent, poisonous and scurrilous animated cartoon — which The Times’ own tweet from its own opinion twitter feed described as:
In this episode of Trump Bites, Donald Trump’s not-so-secret admiration for Vladimir Putin plays out in a teenager’s bedroom, where the fantasies of this forbidden romance come to life.”
Really?
It is no secret that Homosexuals are Not Favored Prom Queens among the radical religious Christian right, the KKK, the old John Birch Society or Tea Partiers and probably most Trump supporters.
Indeed, it is my concern that those who prefer the 2nd Amendment to the 1st will train their AR-15s on gays – with the help of iPhone intercepts from the NSA, FBI, CIA, state police and local weaponized police forces – right after they have trained their weapons on more easily identifiable foes – like Blacks, Latinos, Muslims, Women and Deviant Artists – when the whole capitalist militarist US empire starts collapsing fast and furiously. Talk about Domino theory.
James Michael Nichols wrote in The Huffington Post on July 16, 2018 that:
these reductive depictions of Trump and Putin are all built upon an underlying and insidious foundation of homophobia ― an idea that men who love or have sex with other men are in some way weak, more effeminate and inherently contemptible than those identifying as straight.”
Well-said.
Are the French right? “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose (“the more it changes, the more it’s the same thing”).
Attention Homosexuals: Neither the liberal Democrats nor the corporate mass media nor late night comedians media are your friends running buddies or tried-and-true allies. Would Anne Frank have asked a liberal Democrat, pundit or late night comedian for help as the lights were going out across Europe? Would you?
Liberal Democrats and the corporate mass media have proven as adept at quickly slipping from Gay Pride Parades back into Homophobia as they have slipped away from being anti-McCarthyites into becoming out-and-out-McCarthyites, merely changing the term “Communist” into the term “Russia.”
Worse, the same are championing the cause of the sneering, snarling, hostile and violent allegedly Transgender people — they are mostly MEN after all. Worth noting is that the Trans gang is NOT championing Chelsea Manning’s cause for some reason who, as far as I am concerned, can be whomever she wants to be.
All this at the expense of Lesbians and Heterosexual women, making women in general INVISIBLE and OFF THE RADAR OF PUBLIC POLICY DISCOURSE. Soon the Roberts Court will find a way to invalidate the 19th Amendment just as easily as it annulled the Voting Rights Act and other civil rights acts of the Kennedy/Johnson 1960s.
The point: Trans is NOT transgressive no matter how much the “progressives” might like to try it on for size as a fig leaf hiding the neocon neoliberal empire Wall Street militarist capitalist Homophobia gofers they are. “Liberal” Democrats always seem to be constantly “evolving” or “de-evolving” – or “morphing” as the case may be – “evolving” of course, being the Barack Obama term about his alleged movement in favor of equal marriage rights which I and millions of gay men and women from sea to shining sea treated as something akin to a Resurrection, Ascension and Second Coming, all wrapped up in one.
Wrong.
Note Obama’s silence (and Hillary’s silence) RE all this latest outbreak of toxic Homophobia – but this time not from fundamentalist megachurchers.
Do try to employ reason and understand that all this Homophobia about good relations between the people of the US and the people of Russia is the perhaps predictable result of the whole lame “The Russians Did It” fairy tale.
What a lame effort to exonerate Hillary Clinton from her role as the worst Wall Street Democratic nominee since 1920 (James M. Cox) and 1924 (John W. Davis) – as well as from the Hillary / Podesta / Wasserman-Schultz / Brazile criminal anti-democratic competence of running a winning campaign to steal the nomination from Bernie Sanders and then the complete INCOMPETENCE of running a losing campaign to defeat Donald Trump.
Hillary lost it, the Russians didn’t lose it for her. They may have meddled, but so what? Israel via AIPAC and Netanyahu and Saudi Arabia via all the Saudi “Bandar Bushes” and high-powered PR agencies have done far more to meddle in US elections than the Russians could ever hope to.
And of course, the US Empire is the Undisputed World Cup Champeen at not only meddling in but rigging, buying, stealing and otherwise using Mafia tactics to ensure its preferred outcome in supposedly “democratic elections” around the world since the last War the US won, which was in 1945. (And even then it was the Russians with 27 million fatalities who defeated Hitler, not the US, England or France with 500,000 fatalities each).
And of course, NONE of that includes out-and-out flagrant, blatant Regime ChangeTM the US has conducted worldwide, also since 1945, making the world safe for democracy, capitalism, empire and Humanitarian InterventionTM.
In testimony by video like to the Council of Europe on April 11, 2014 reported by the Guardian, Edward Snowden said he did not believe the NSA was engaged in “nightmare scenarios”, such as the active compilation of a list of homosexuals “to round them up and send them into camps”.
But Snowden also said that the infrastructure allowing this to happen had been built. The NSA, its allies, authoritarian governments and even private organisations could all abuse this technology, he said, adding that mass surveillance was a “global problem”. It led to “less liberal and safe societies”, he told the council.”
So Homosexuals need to be disturbed by how fast and how easily liberal Democrats and the corporate media descended into the Hell of Homophobia over the Helsinki summit between Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump.
What sort of Kristallnacht are you waiting for?
NOTE:- The Advocate, nation newsmedium for the US LGBTQI “community” today leads with another story about poor male models seduced and abandoned – to coin a phrase – by some fashion photographer in an extraordinarily lengthy story which has the effect, of course, of distracting from creepy creeping Harvey Weinsteinist Predation Upon Women in general and upon Lesbians in particular. NOT ONE WORD about Homophobic Trump / Putin mass corporate media, comedian or new york times screeches and giggles.
Thom Prentice is a male homosexual, not-transgender, not cis-gender, who has a life teaching, writing, thinking, reading books, and calling out hypocrites and hypocrisy along with stupidity and narcissism from time to time. He thinks that, at minimum, the T, Q and I should be removed from LGBTQI because they are NOT sexual orientations and further that this fun little tea party of identity politics needs to be trashed and replaced with authentic class-based critique of neoliberal austerity capitalist empire which uses the atmosphere as an open sewer. Immediately. Or the atmosphere will cough this species out the way a cat coughs out a hairball.
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As this apposite essay says, we shouldn’t blame the cultural perception of difference on “Cultural Marxism” …I would go further: we shouldn’t blame it on capitalism either. Capitalism is an extremised form of pre-existing flaws in our perception of ourselves: it is pan-historic, if you like. Our misrecognition of ourselves cuts is off from reality: the results at the macro-social level are radicalised capitalism and identitarian sectarianism (the identity feedback loop between the individual and their culture or sub-culture becomes the dialectical dynamic of extremism). To say we only have ourselves to blame is equally fallacious. We only have ourselves to turn to in solidarity: to support love – not fear – in our communities …and extend that love to the Other in cross-cultural and international solidarity. There is a latent power in our humanity that is oppressed by a culture of greed, hatred, fear, and ignorance: culture is what we do …together in love and mutual aid we transform the culture. It will never be transformed for us: it maybe transformed by us?
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/434924-left-policy-identity-divided/
Strange just how amazingly “flexible” and “elastic” the Democratic party’s devotion to ‘identity politics’ can become when the chips are down. If right wingers were using lesbian “jokes” and “gay cartoons” to attack Hillary or Obama these very same “progressive” voices and comedians would be foaming at the mouth in their accusations of homophobia. This is called hypocrisy.
One thing should be quite clear by now, the Democratic party has absolutely no concern for gays, lesbians, the poor, minorities, immigrants, refugees, homeless children, abused children, war veterans, or anyone else not in the 1% – except as an empty prop to use to try to differentiate themselves from Republicans – in spite of both parties sharing devotion to the very same insane immoral pax Americana imperialist project.
It’ll be more than a hairball Thomas.
It’ll be a FIREBALL☄️🔥☄️
“Divide and rule” has always been the most powerful method of domination and now it seems that the media really don’t care who they offend. There is no system. They just want to rake up as much anger as possible – as long as the anger is spraying out in all directions, never to take definite direction.
‘Divide and Rule’ – by creating sectarian communities – has become ‘Atomise and Rule’ due to identitarianism. Only, we should not necessarily blame it on PoMo: it has been coming since before the Enlightenment project …Cartesian materialism is a necessary and sufficient cause in itself. We should look beyond our difference to our essential humanity: which is an emergence of a basic nondualism and interdependence. Equanimity is a function of relationship with reality: we are only angry in as much as our focus is distracted by the shit they pump out of our TV-media industrial complex. The evolution will not be televised – as Gil Scott Heron told us – it will be live. 😉
It is class war, my brother. It has always been class war. “Our side” is taking a beating and we may not get the chance to turn this around while we are careening towards species extinction. But it sure is heartening to read the work of writers like Thomas who apparently have not given up.
It’s evolution, my sister. Ii’s always been evolution. There are no sides: the oppressors are perhaps more oppressed than the oppressed …only, do not take that too literally! To avert species extinction our slim chance is for the reciprocity of mutual aid to transcend all gender, racial, sexual, religious, identity, economic, social, political and class divides. I’m with you, Thomas, and anybody else who is in touch with life enough to be able to resist. If we lose our fear of each other (a major determinant of sectarian grouping); and our fear of the unknown (a major determinant of the status quo); we will have nothing left to lose but our fear of freedom itself. Only love can conquer the ‘great divide’.
Evolution in the direction of species extinction.
Nothing is inevitable: it’s only collective karmic traces that make it seem that way. But karmic enaction (samskaran conditionality) is not our only mode of operation …we do not have to repeat the past or be shackled by an outmoded way of viewing things. Every moment of every day is subject to change: all we have to do is to step into the moment and become that change …then let’s see what we can do together? We ain’t dead yet!
It’s an existential war. The basic Rightwing psychopathology is fear and hatred of others, including fellow Rightists, and, often enough, of themselves. It is their reaction to the befuddling facts of existence and of mortality. They worship Death because they fear it so very much, and hope, somehow, to placate it by groveling before it, and killing as many victims to be sacrifices to it, so that it might leave them alone. How else can you explain the insouciant blood-lust of that thing, Madeleine Albright, so much an exemplar of the type, who casually observed that the deliberate, cold, calculated, murder of 500,000 Iraqi children under five was , ‘Yes’, ‘..worth it’.
It’s a sign of the End Times, George. The ‘elites’ thrown up by globalised neo-liberal capitalism, and winnowed according to their unquestioning obeisance to the Yankee Reich and the Holy Zionist apartheid regime, are morally, spiritually and, above all else, intellectually incapable of dealing with humanity’s existential crises. How can you address the economic implosion of end-stage capitalist parasitism with its ever growing debt, inequality and social savagery, when you are so very, very, malignantly insane as to believe that ‘more of the same’ is the only permissible cure.
Moreover, how can you address the rapidly accelerating ecological collapse when ‘growth’ is your cancerous raison d’etre, and when you are in thrall to the monetary ‘contributions’ and other even more open bribes, of the fossil fuel, tobacco, asbestos, junk-food, agrichemicals, weapons and other genocidists? And how do you fashion a sustainable world order based on human perpetuity, when you are slaves and stooges of the US/Israeli Imperium that DEMANDS total obedience from every country on Earth, on pain of military aggression, relentless subversion, sanctions and malicious ‘interference’. An Imperium led by ravening, blood-crazed, psychopaths.
I, naturally, am fully cognisant that the Western elites are commonly so stupid and brainwashed that they can simply ignore the existential catastrophe for our species, just so long as their wealth, power and privilege are maintained. But I suspect that even in those reptilian brains, the smell of burning as the fires rapidly approach, literally as well as metaphorically, has sent them into a sort of panic, hence their rabid lashings about, as they attempt to save themselves by dooming others.
It just shows how their arguments are failing that they have to stoop so low.
It reminds me of Orwell’s 1984 ‘Two Minutes Hate’. The picture of Putin and / or Trump is being projected on our screens instead of Goldstein’s, The crowd and ‘party members’ are whipped up in to a frenzy of hate, foaming at the mouth.
To paraphrase Orwell, let’s not forget, “we’ve always been at war with Russia”.
Thomas Prentice is an exquisite writer and I mean to follow his work. As an old straight female with close ties to my gay and lesbian brothers and sisters, I have been shocked since the beginning over the cheap shots corporate media has been taking against the fumbling attempts of Orange Mussolini to reach out to Russia. Hey, an oligarch is an oligarch and there’s plenty to criticize in Putin but that personal sh*t is just too disgusting. Trump is certainly a ridiculous excuse for a himan but that Wall Street Whore was exponentially more dangerous. I agree with every single word in this essay.
Is it the Jewish media that is doing this?
How is this good for Jews?
The writer is exactly right the media is attacking two targets at the same time and to discredit both. You could say that they are speaking with a forked tongue.
However, propaganda is always like this and devoid of facts all you have is comment and opinion.
I might have no regard for Trump but when you look at Clinton, the world was saved from a far worse fate.
it became a meme used by virtually all the comics. i found it tedious and disgusting.
“comics”
comedians and comics. tom tomorrow used to be one of my favorite political comics. i cant stand him now.
The same ‘comics’ have been joking about prison rape for decades. They have been disgustingly opportunistic for a long time.
you are right. i hate that.